Slow operation

[Garden]

I bought my German M740 a few days ago and have used it with both a network attached PC and USB drive (200g). My experience is that all the functions work - but the performance is very poor. I am very interested to hear if anyone else has similar problems - or perhaps I have a faulty box. The general symptoms are:

1. Menus take an age to appear
2. There is often a delay between button press and the action being performed
3. Displaying Mpegs from the USB drive is a hit and miss affair - some display some don't and the delays get longer after each picture and eventually the only recourse is to reboot.
4. Not all the files I load on to the hard drive are displayed in the media view.
5. When recording, performance of watching tv via the other tuner is dramaticall reduced with menus displaying very slowly and general lagging.
6. The orange light keeps dimming fading in and out (although I wish I could turn it off) and it often blinks, which is an annoying distraction when watching tv.

Has anyone else experienced this.
The only function that appears to work reliably is listening to MP3 music.

Of course there are the limitations that are discussed elsewhere but these we have to accept for now as there is no UK model.

As you can probably tell I am not a happy owner at the moment - I am hoping there is some magic button I haven't pressed yet that will make this machine run like it should.

[1701D]

Hi Garden!

Welcome on board!
At first, it would be interesting to hear with which firmware release you are using the box.
Generally, the performance of the siemens has been improved with version 1.37. also Handling of mpegs is better with 1.37 then it was with prior versions.
So, for your points 1, 2, 3, 5 try the latest firmware release. Point 6: This is normal behaviour if a harddrive is plugged in.

kind regards

Klaus

[Garden]

Klaus,
Thanks for the response, I am running 1.29, I tried to load 1.37 a few days ago but it reported errors - somethign about not being compatible. Anyway I have just downloaded another copy of 1.37:

First attempt failed again - invalid software. I then did a factory reset, skipped the channel search and tried again, this worked. I'll report back in a few days with results re. previous problems.
Cheers,
Jay

[Garden]

I have now been testing the 1.37 firmware and performance has improved:

MPEG handling - it now tells me when it cannot load an image rather than displayign a blank screen. Some of the images are too large for it to display. However it is still very slow loading images. However the main problem that still exists is that performance begins to slow down after showing 7 or 8 images to the point that it eventually locks up - then requiring a reboot.

Playlists - it still very slow adding items to a playlist.

EPG - the previous version displayed EPG data very well, but this version only displays the first line. It is also hit and miss - sometimes indicating that there is no EPG data, but two minutes later it is there, then two minutes later it has gone again.

Things are moving in the right direction but there is still a long way to go. The box does not yet do very well what it claims to be able to do well.

I might hang on for the next release of Firmware - the jury is still out.

[1701D]

EPG - the previous version displayed EPG data very well, but this version only displays the first line. It is also hit and miss - sometimes indicating that there is no EPG data, but two minutes later it is there, then two minutes later it has gone again.


I have never seen an EPG problem like this. Maybe, this is caused by 'strange' SI Informations. In hich country do you use the box?

kind regards

Klaus

[robinwood01]

Hello

I am french. Sorry for my english language.

I have buy a Siemens M740 AV.

All of french channel work correctly, but when a would like to record the quality are bad.
The sound is hached and on the picture a I can see lots of square.
It is the same for the recording, when i play my recording I can see lots of square.

When i would like to record on lan, when i play the reccording, yhe screen is black color and they have no sound.

What can i do ?

Thanks you

[1701D]

Hello

I am french. Sorry for my english language.

I have buy a Siemens M740 AV.

All of french channel work correctly, but when a would like to record the quality are bad.
The sound is hached and on the picture a I can see lots of square.
It is the same for the recording, when i play my recording I can see lots of square.

When i would like to record on lan, when i play the reccording, yhe screen is black color and they have no sound.

What can i do ?

Thanks you
You didn't say, if you record on USB or on a network usually. If the 'life' picture is OK, the box should record everything in the same quality as it is broadcasted. If your records shows dropouts then I would assume that there is a problem with the speed of your lan-connection or your USB harddisk. (E.g. the connection is just USB 1.1 caused by a bad cable) Did you install the latest firmware?

kind regards

Klaus

[robinwood01]

The lan recording don't work, when I play the picture of the screen is black.


The USB recording work but bad quality.

The connexion USB 2 is good when I plug the HD on my computer the rate tranfer is about 23 000 KB/s.

When I see the réception quality in setting, all channel is about Force 70% and quality : critical or good.

It is for that ?

Thanks for your answser

[gm28lab]

The lan recording don't work, when I play the picture of the screen is black.


The USB recording work but bad quality.

The connexion USB 2 is good when I plug the HD on my computer the rate tranfer is about 23 000 KB/s.

When I see the réception quality in setting, all channel is about Force 70% and quality : critical or good.

It is for that ?

Thanks for your answser

For what concern USB Drive . (see French Doc page 20, first "i" box)
If the Drive is powered by USB bus it may be a problem : certain USB ports have a limited power. The power is not enough to have a disk running, because it is limited to less than 0.5 A.
A 2.5" USB disk requires generally 2 USB connections one for data and Power, the other for power.
If the USB external drive is powered by an external power supply make sure this Drive is not connected to ground. That can introduce some ground loop, and induce spikes and so on, that disturb MPEG2 decoding.

[robinwood01]

Maybe my HD USB is not 100% compatible with the siemens M740 AV.

I test with Lan it perfect. I don't see problem.


Thanks you for your helping.